


Major Arcana

by PacificRimbaud



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Muggle, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Closeted Character, Coming Out, Explicit Sexual Content, Multi, Open Relationships, YouTube
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:07:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24886576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PacificRimbaud/pseuds/PacificRimbaud
Summary: Lucius Malfoy can't sleep.Sybill Trelawney is here to help.
Relationships: Lucius Malfoy & Sybill Trelawney, Lucius Malfoy/Andromeda Black Tonks, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy
Comments: 30
Kudos: 65
Collections: 2020 DBQ Round Four: Divination





	Major Arcana

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [TheSlytherinCabal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSlytherinCabal/pseuds/TheSlytherinCabal) in the [DBQ2020Round4](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/DBQ2020Round4) collection. 



> Disclaimer: The characters do not belong to me but are the property of J.K.R. and Warner Bros. No copyright infringement is intended. The theme for this round of the competition was Divination and my chosen pairing was Lucius Malfoy & Sybill Trelawney. Comments/Reviews are encouraged by The Slytherin Cabal's Admin Team on all stories in Death By Quill, but comments left by readers are set to be moderated by story authors until the end of the competition in order to protect participants' anonymity. Thank you to my beta for their time and help.

“Card one is the Significator. It’s you. In this position, you have the Wheel of Fortune, reversed. The wheel is a circle—things that are cyclical. What this means—and you can choose to reflect on this, take it as an opportunity—is that there are negative cycles. I sense that this reading is going to be an invitation to own your power to change old, worn habits or energies that tie you to situations that no longer serve you. Of course, change is inevitable. It happens whether you want it to or not. This is a moment to accept that.”

* * *

Lucius is buried to the hilt in his wife's sister, the widow, at his son's high school graduation party when he begins to have the nagging feeling that something is wrong in his life.

"Come on, baby."

In the third guest bath on the second floor of his house in the Hamptons, he shifts her knee, hitched onto the marble counter, feeling for the way her body grips him when he gets it right.

“Don’t call me baby.” Her voice is choked, and he knows she’s right there.

A bead of sweat rolls down his temple. “Why not?” 

“Because I don’t want you to.”

He tilts his hips by half a degree and— _there_ it is.

Her palm slaps the mirror, and he watches the reflection of her mouth fall open in a cry that makes no sound. She's pink at the chest and sticky with perspiration, one breast fully bared and one covered by the hard grip of his hand. She stares back at him, shuddering with her second orgasm of their second encounter of the day.

Her eyes are half-lidded, but her gaze is hard.

Resentful.

His fingertips make indents in Andromeda's still-quivering hip while he comes.

* * *

He finds Narcissa on the terrace. “Is that the Krug?”

“No. The Gold Reserve.”

She hands him her glass, and he sips, watching the guests on the lawn.

“It’s not bad.” He passes it back.

“The car’s being delivered in ten minutes,” she says, checking her phone. “Where’s Draco?”

There’s an edge to her voice that makes Lucius turn and give her his complete attention. 

“Is something wrong?”

She drains her glass and smiles.

“Nothing in the least.”

She’s one of the world's best liars.

But she's not _that_ good.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Lucius watches his only child—lean, pale, and suddenly, extraordinarily, bafflingly tall—slip behind the wheel of his new black Lamborghini and tear down the drive toward the main road with his girlfriend in the passenger seat.

“Off he goes.” Lucius says it with a casual detachment that belies the unaccountable hollowness behind his sternum.

Narcissa shifts away from the hand he wraps around her hip.

“I’m flying to Boston tonight.”

“I thought you were leaving in the morning?”

She pulls in a sharp breath through her nose. “I’ve changed my mind.”

“For a baseball game?” Lucius lifts an eyebrow.

“Yes.”

"That should be fun for you.”

When he leans in to kiss Narcissa’s cool cheek, her flinch is almost imperceptible.

“I'm sure it will be.”

* * *

After the caterers have packed up and the cleaners have come and gone, Lucius sits in the swing hanging from the ceiling of the terrace outside the master suite, finishing off an open bottle of Dom Pérignon. 

He pulls his phone from his pocket and texts Draco. _Are you coming home tonight?_

_Meeting friends in the city_

Lucius sets his empty glass on the plank floor. _Will you come back tomorrow?_

_Will let u know_

He feels the brief spark of panic he knows he'll live with for the rest of his life now that his infant son is running about the world wearing a lanky, fully grown man's body. _You’re not texting me while you’re driving?_

_Pansy’s driving rn_

Lucius can hear his pulse in his ears. _If you wreck the car there will be a reckoning_

_I know_

* * *

At midnight, Lucius makes his way to bed alone.

Under cool sheets, with the windows cracked to the salt air, he begins another futile attempt to fall asleep.

Like it has for months, 12:00 turns into 1:00 turns into 1:30 turns into 2:24.

It feels as though he’s never successfully slept in his life.

He picks up his phone and considers jerking off—goes so far as to glide his hand over his cock—but he’s not in the mood.

He’d have gladly fucked Andromeda again, but she and the grandson she’s raising are asleep in a hotel in Southampton, probably because she considered the likelihood of Lucius finding his way to her bed at 2:00 a.m.

On YouTube, he watches two videos on improving a putting stroke, which leads him to a video called “Tiger VERSUS Rory!” and from there he watches a medley of golf course SNAFUs.

He accidentally taps an ad for a zombie survival mobile game, then purposely taps into a video called “Extreme Photoshop Makeover-Favorite Celebrities” for reasons that remain opaque to himself.

After that, he watches a Photoshop tutorial.

The voice of the video’s narrator is low and soft, and Lucius finds it unexpectedly relaxing.

The first comment reads, "ASMR: triggered."

He Googles _ASMR_.

In the first YouTube video he watches, a woman with a Russian accent whispers into a microphone while running her fingers over the bristles of a hairbrush.

He finds women tapping gel fingernails on the lids of eyeshadow palettes, women patting facial products onto their cheeks with the pads of their fingers, and a bald Australian man giving a woman an amateur massage.

As the light outside the open window rises into the soul-sapping grey of predawn, Lucius lets the algorithm push him to a video of what is possibly the most ridiculous woman he's ever seen.

The camera frames her from the waist up, sitting at a table overlaid with a batik cloth. Another cloth hangs behind her, dyed in widening, concentric circles of shaded rainbow hues. She wears colossal glasses with translucent purple frames, and her hair—a mass of dry strawberry blonde curls tinseled with grey—is wrapped around with a bright length of fabric. She’s wearing a handknit cardigan and a linen dress as shapely as a paper grocery bag. Behind the thick lenses of her glasses, her eyes are the color of a glass fishing float and outlandishly large.

Drumming the pads of her fingers against an oversized deck of cards in front of her, she leans toward a microphone mounted on the table to her left.

“Welcome . . .”

She speaks in a level, quiet voice with a lot of breath and what seems like an extraordinary amount of mouth moisture.

She leans into a second microphone mounted to her right.

“To Divine Whispers . . .”

The hair on the back of Lucius’ neck rises.

“A . . .”

His scalp tingles.

“S. . .”

Christ, his eyelids are sore.

“M. . .”

They fucking _hurt._

“R.”

He lets them fall closed.

“I’m Sybill.”

How long has it been since he’s had a full night’s sleep? A year and a half?

“Today,” she whispers, cutting her deck of cards in two and letting the halves riffle together, “we’re going to do a reading for the full moon.”

Before he can scoff, he’s asleep.

* * *

Draco and Pansy return two days later in the Lamborghini, followed by a Range Rover filled with their friends.

“I told them they could stay in the guest house.” Draco leans against the treadmill, watching Lucius on the elliptical machine. “We’ll drive home on Tuesday.”

Lucius brushes the sweat out of his eye with the back of his wrist. “That’s fine. How’s the car?”

“Fantastic. Is Aunt Andromeda still in Southampton?”

“She went back to New York this morning.” Lucius’ cock twitches like he’s thirty years younger and still desperate to know what it's like to fuck. “Why?”

“No reason.” Draco unclips the emergency cutoff cord. “Harry and I thought we might go see Teddy.”

Through the French doors of the home gym, Lucius can see Harry Potter, a boy from Draco’s lacrosse team, throwing a football with Blaise, Theo, and a muscular, sandy-haired kid Lucius doesn’t recognize and who can’t aim to save his life.

Pansy sits in an Adirondack chair on the lawn, scrolling through her phone. 

“Are you feeling alright?” Lucius raises the resistance on the machine. “You look a bit pink.”

Draco’s blush deepens. “I’m fine.” He clips the cord back in place. “We’re going out for ice cream.”

* * *

Lucius listens to the car doors open and close on the drive out front.

Pushing through a hill on the elliptical, he flicks a spray of sweat from his forehead, tucks his AirPods into his ears, and opens YouTube on his phone.

“ . . . and I’m Sybill.”

It’s a newer video, posted last week.

She riffles her cards, and Lucius shivers from his nape to the tops of his shoulders.

“Today, our reading is going to be about transformations, and how we can best bring them about. For ourselves, for—" she gestures to the air around her "—the collective. But first—” she picks up a frosted glass candle holder and begins tapping her short, unpolished fingernails on its side “—I’m going to light a candle.” She sniffs the purple wax. "Frankincense. Sandalwood. Jasmine. Lavender. For the Crown chakra."

Lucius snorts.

She sets the candle down, picks up a box of matches, and holds it in front of a microphone while drumming her fingers on its top. “To help us be receptive to these energies.”

God help him, when she lights the candle, he thinks he can smell it.

* * *

"The Crown position shows us your current influences. And what may come to pass, depending on your choices. You have the Tower, upright. This indicates an upheaval. A really sudden change. Chaos. Destruction, even. There’s the tower, being struck by lightning, burning and crumbling, and the figures fall from it. But see the lightning pass through the top of the tower— through the crown? This can be the universal energy—the divine—passing through the Crown chakra. So it can also mean receiving this divine revelation. Experiencing an awakening. And the figures are falling into the unknown."

* * *

Narcissa’s NutriBullet pulverizes handfuls of fruit and dark leafy greens into a cold soup.

Lucius finishes off shots from the espresso machine with milk and foam, then sits on a stool at the end of the kitchen island in their townhouse on the Upper East Side.

“What time are you leaving?” He looks at the weekend bags sitting by the door and sips his cappuccino.

“Half an hour. You’re usually gone by now.”

“I have an appointment at 9:00.”

She nods and pours her liquid salad into a pair of glasses.

She’s wearing leggings and a sports bra, and her hair is pulled back in two braids.

As she rinses the blender jar, Lucius considers his wife’s ass in lycra.

She’s never seriously worked out in her life before now, but she’s 43, and looks 25.

He looks 44 and feels 60.

Their door buzzes.

Lucius looks at the kid—a man, technically—that walks into the kitchen, dressed in a pair of joggers and a Red Sox t-shirt.

He has dark blond hair and a face so well-designed that its owner has obviously never had to think about making himself appealing on the level of personality.

“Hey.” The kid holds out his hand, then clenches Lucius’s palm in a hard grip. “Cormac.”

“You’ll be putting my wife through the wringer this weekend, I understand.”

Cormac looks between Narcissa and Lucius. “Absolutely. She’s making great progress with those abs.”

Lucius realizes it’s been so long since he’s fucked his own wife that he has no idea what her abs currently look like. He swigs the last of his cappuccino. “Red Sox?"

“Oh, yeah. Caught a game a few weeks ago back in Boston.”

Lucius’ mouth twitches. “Fun.” He sets his cup in the sink and grabs his suit jacket off the back of a chair. “Enjoy yourselves.”

Cormac glances at Narcissa’s ass and wets his bottom lip.

He looks back at Lucius and smiles. “We will.”

* * *

“163/94.” His doctor frowns. “How’s your diet? Are you getting any exercise?”

Lucius buttons his shirt.

“I eat vegetables. Meat. Not a lot of crap. I work out most days.”

The doctor nods. “How’s your sleep?”

Lucius thinks about all the four, five hour nights.

“Not great.”

Then he thinks about Sybill and the riffling cards.

“But I've found one or two things that help.”

“Good. Keep working on that. In the meanwhile, let’s get you some medicine.”

* * *

Cho stands in front of Lucius’ desk with her phone out, going over the day. “I blocked out two hours for lunch. Do you need a reservation?”

“I’ve made plans.”

Once she’s left, pulling the door closed behind her, he turns to face his floor-to-ceiling window, looking out on Central Park. He taps out a text. _The Mandarin alright?_

He doesn’t get an immediate response, and while he waits, he checks his email until his phone finally buzzes on the desk.

_Come by the gallery._

Lucius’ brow knits. _I have the suite._

_The gallery is fine._

_No it isn't,_ Lucius thinks, and his blood pressure rises.

He runs a hand through his hair, still thick, and so blond it hides the fact that a third of it is grey.

For an hour, he attempts to work, but he continually cycles through thoughts about Andromeda in bed, and not in bed, about Narcissa and her fucking terrible taste in men, about the weeks left before Draco's room in the house is empty.

The blood rushing in his ears sounds like a waterfall.

* * *

At noon, he takes a car to Andromeda’s gallery in Harlem.

Along the half-drywalled red brick walls of a renovated garage, a series of silver bowls sit on white pedestals, single beams of natural light elaborately directed into each one from lenses mounted near the skylights overhead.

Andromeda sits at her desk, looking through a stack of glossy photographs while her infant grandson sleeps in a bassinet beside her.

Lucius leans in the doorway with his hands in his pockets and watches her stand to face him.

Right now, he should be tugging her black dress over her hips at the end of a hotel bed, but instead, he’s half a room away while the corners of her mouth pull down involuntarily.

He knows what she’s going to say, and that there’s nothing he can do to stop it.

He tries anyway.

“Narcissa and I have had an agreement for ten years. You know that. I haven’t broken any rules. We don’t ask, and we don’t—”

“You're not breaking any rules when you take her sister to bed?”

Lucius says nothing.

She takes a stuttering breath. “The last year and a half has been an awful, _awful_ mistake.”

Lucius flinches.

"I feel _so much_ guilt. And I have—" She swallows, and looks at the bassinet. "I can’t be with someone who can't actually be here."

There’s a tiny mole at the crease between Andromeda’s thigh and her cunt, and Lucius has the sudden urge to kiss her there, as though he could stamp himself on her permanently that way.

He wonders whether Narcissa’s trainer thinks these sorts of things about her. If he wants to pull Narcissa’s softness around him the way Lucius wants Andromeda’s.

Of course he doesn’t, the careless little fuck.

Lucius doesn’t move from the doorway.

“I’m in love with you.”

Andromeda shakes her head. “You’re not supposed to be.”

She’s crying without any sound.

The baby wakes up.

* * *

Cho’s away from her desk, and as Lucius passes by on his way into the office, bruised and empty inside, he glances down at her phone.

He does a double take.

He could swear the girl in the paused frame of the video Cho has been watching on her lunch break is Pansy. It's titled “Sunday with My Love,” and the sandy-haired boy Lucius remembers from the Hamptons is kissing Pansy’s mouth.

He feels less compunction than he should as he sits down at his desk and brings up a channel called Misss Parkinson on his own phone.

It’s Pansy, unquestionably. Her channel appears to be popular. Most of her posts are makeup tutorials, but she also posts shopping hauls and montages of days out, both alone and with friends.

She spends a lot of time in the arms of the sandy-haired kid.

He watches part of a year-old video called “Botanical Garden with Neville.”

Lucius is baffled. He clicks through video after video, trying to find his son in Pansy's life.

And then he does.

He feels like a voyeur, but he can’t look away. Over the course of half an hour in a video called “Daytime Glam,” Pansy rings Draco’s clear silver-blue eyes in shimmering fuschia and gold eye makeup. Brushes luminous highlights over his cheekbones. Paints his lips a mirror-gloss pink.

In the end, he’s someone Lucius doesn’t recognize.

And he’s beautiful.

Lucius scans the comments.

The fifth one down, by a user called HarryPottah, is a heart-eyes emoji, and a heart, and then the words, “Luv u so much baby.”

Lucius gathers the scattered fragments of a picture in his mind.

He lays them down, and fits them together.

When he’s done, he only wonders how he didn't know.

* * *

That night, Lucius sits on the end of the bed in the room that he keeps separately from Narcissa’s, his hair dripping and a towel wrapped around his hips.

He picks up his phone, and opens his text thread with Andromeda. He types, _What if I get a divorce?_

He immediately deletes it without sending, then opens his thread with Narcissa.

His thumb hovers over the keypad for a full minute.

He sets his phone down.

The inside of his chest feels raw, like it’s been roughly scooped out.

He picks up his phone again, and opens the YouTube app. 

He’s watched every one of Sybill’s videos, and most of them twice.

He navigates to his favorite, an energetic cleansing and Tarot reading organized so that each card speaks to the needs of a Chakra point, and plugs his AirPods into his ears.

Sybill’s smile is off-kilter, more than a bit daffy. She pushes her glasses further back on her face.

As she begins, he taps the arrow to drop down the full description of the video, and looks for the hundredth time at the URL for her website.

For the first time, he taps it.

There’s a banner at the top of the page advertising something called Whisper Weekend.

Below that, she has a menu of physical and digital products: Tarot decks, crystals, silver jewelry, audio tracks of binaural beats and guided meditation.

There’s a link to purchase a “Personalized Tarot Reading.”

Lucius clicks.

* * *

“Hello.”

On the other end of the phone, her voice is breathy, with a bit of an affected throb. Lucius’ scalp tingles. “Hello.”

“I’m going to light a candle to begin.”

There’s the sound of a match being struck.

“And before we really get started, we’ll need your query. As we discussed over email, open-ended is best—relating to yourself and what actions you can take in your own life. Did you come up with one?”

In the dark of his bedroom, Lucius leans back against his headboard.

His voice sounds uneven, an old radio dial set between stations, signals cutting in and out.

“What am I supposed to do?”

* * *

"In the position of the sixth card, which is what will happen in the future, you have upright Death. An armored skeleton rides a pale horse. Death, the ultimate change that comes for us all. During this time, one phase of your life will close, and another will open up. It may be challenging to let go of what you’ve known, but remember that when we don’t clear away the debris of a garden in the spring, new growth can’t thrive. We cut back and remove what’s no longer healthy to make way for the life coming up through the soil.”

* * *

“Here’s the card.”

Slipping on his jacket as he heads out the door, Lucius grabs an unsealed greeting card from Cho.

“I’ve confirmed Monterey airport. And before you go—"

Lucius pauses.

"—I’m about to put the order in with Putnam & Putnam. You said a large arrangement. Do you have a preference as far as color—”

“Just tell them to make it soft.”

* * *

At the kitchen island, he flips the card open. His pen hovers over the blank paper, making occasional darts toward the page before pulling back.

After nearly ten minutes, he writes one line, then seals the envelope.

* * *

“Draco?” Lucius knocks on his son’s closed bedroom door.

There’s a noncommittal grunt on the other side that sounds enough like “Come in,” that Lucius enters.

On his bed, Draco reclines on his side, wearing headphones and scrolling through his phone.

Lucius crosses the room, then hesitates.

Draco looks up, unimpressed.

“You’re lurking.”

Lucius sits on the end of the bed, and tosses the card next to Draco. “Here.”

“What is this?”

“Just open it.”

Draco puts his phone down and tears the seal on the card.

Lucius isn’t fond of greeting cards, so much so that he delegated the task of choosing one to Cho.

“What’s the occasion?” she’d asked.

“For Draco. For—” He hadn’t known what to say.

Cho—efficient, perceptive—had said, “I’ll find something nice.” 

The one she chose is lovely. A bit weird. An original, actually hand-painted by some young artist she knows.

All Lucius has written inside is, “I love you.”

Draco scoffs and pushes the card aside. “Alright.” He turns back to his phone. “Are you finally getting a divorce?”

“Draco?”

“What?”

“You don’t need to hide.”

Draco stills. “What?"

Lucius watches as Draco’s chest begins to rise and fall, quick and shallow.

“You’re my only child.” Lucius grips his fingertips hard into his knees. He's not good at this. He forges ahead anyway. “Nothing could ever make me love you any less than I do.”

For a moment, Draco stares straight ahead, breathing like he’s working hard. Then he wraps one of his long, thin arms around his own waist, pulls his knees up to his chest, pinches the bridge of his nose, and begins to cry.

Lucius clears his throat.

“Does your mother know?”

For a long time Draco doesn’t respond.

Then he nods.

* * *

Narcissa sits curled in the Le Corbusier chair in the sitting room of the master suite.

She’s recently brushed her hair. The cool blonde mass of it, curving down over her shoulder and hanging nearly to the book in her lap, is warmed by the late afternoon light streaking from west to east down the tree-lined street outside.

Lucius sits on the arm of her sofa, and she finally looks up.

“Yes?”

Lucius is struck for a moment by her beauty, sharp and unyielding, and how much of it—and of her shrewdness, her intelligence, her hidden ability to love blindly, recklessly—she’s gifted to their son.

“He’s going to break your heart.”

She narrows her eyes, assessing. But there’s no play for her to find. No angle.

She closes her book and sets it aside.

“Obviously.”

Lucius gets up and crosses the room, then drops to his knees by her chair.

He feels more than sees her shrink away in her confusion, but when he takes her cold left hand in his—God, her hands and feet have always been so incredibly cold—she doesn’t pull it away.

With care, he eases her wedding set off her finger.

The rings feel different in his hand than they did 22 years ago. They’re exquisite—an exorbitantly costly Tiffany set her mother helped him choose, artful and elegant. At one time they felt dense with meaning and purpose. He remembers when they thrilled him. Frightened him.

Now they’re metal and rock, and he knows she doesn’t want them.

He slides his own ring off, and drops them all on the table next to Narcissa’s book.

“Alright,” he says.

If he didn’t know her, he’d read calm and lack of interest in her body and her face.

“I thought Malfoy men never divorced their wives.”

Lucius lays his head on her knee.

“My father’s been gone for three years. I think I get to decide what Malfoy men do.”

She strokes her cool fingers softly over the back of his neck.

“Thank you.”

He closes his eyes.

* * *

“The tenth and final card in the spread is the outcome.”

“What’s going to happen to me?”

“Yes. And in this position, you have Judgment.”

Lucius' blood pressure screams.

“On this card we see the Archangel Gabriel blowing his trumpet. And people rising from their graves. It’s a depiction of judgment, and it sounds ominous, but we bring our attention to the resurrection itself. Being called forth to an awakening. There is judgment, yes, but it's a reckoning. Closing out the past. Clearing and resolving. One of the major themes of this card is absolution.”

* * *

He receives a text.

_The flowers are extraordinary._

In the back of a car heading south on Highway 1 from Monterey, Lucius watches the Pacific Ocean flash through the gaps in the spindly pines. _I’m glad._

_I met Narcissa for lunch._

Lucius’ heart rate picks up. _Did you?_

_I did. It was good._

The sky over the ocean is aggressively blue, a thin strip of long, insubstantial clouds lining the horizon.

_What are you doing?_ he asks.

_Having a nap._

A picture loads.

It’s a selfie of Andromeda lying on her bed in the West Village, with its blush-pink linens. Teddy is tucked into her arm, his face closed down in sleep.

In his mind, Lucius smells her dark hair and the Calamondin orange tree growing in the south-facing window.

She texts him again.

_When will you be back?_

The tension in his body drains away.

_Soon._

* * *

Hands in the pockets of his chinos, his linen shirt blown against his torso by a northwest wind, Lucius strides down the wooden stairs of the retreat center toward the ocean.

A group stands chatting by a gazebo in a semicircle of grass at the edge of a bluff, drinking what Lucius wishes was wine but looks like unfiltered grape juice.

Sybill is there, with her back to the sea.

She's wearing a lawn skirt and a shapeless top that falls away from her shoulder, her wild strawberry hair whipped around her face by the wind.

As Lucius approaches, she lifts her hands, and her silver bangles chime like tiny bells.

In her arms, he's flooded with the scents of patchouli and lavender, sherry and a hint of cannabis.

Below the bluffs of Big Sur, the ocean rhythmically sighs, endlessly pouring itself against the rocks on the shore.

"Welcome," Sybill says.

Her words are soft.

The hair on the back of Lucius' neck rises.


End file.
